Google will support Chrome for XP until end of the year

A year ago, Microsoft stopped support for their decade-old Windows XP operating system, meaning the millions of users still running the OS are vulnerable to exploits. Google wants to help.

Says Google: "At the operating system level, computers running XP are inherently in danger of being infected by malware and viruses, making it increasingly difficult for Chrome to provide a secure browsing environment. That's why we strongly encourage everyone to update to a supported, secure operating system.

That said, we know that not everyone can easily switch to a newer operating system. Millions of people are still working on XP computers every day. We want those people to have the option to use a browser that's up-to-date and as safe as possible on an unsupported operating system."

Google had promised to keep Chrome on XP support through April 2015, and now that we are here, Google says support has been extended until the end of the year.

For the few XP VMs I have (and one single-purpose machine that needs XP), I stopped using Chrome on them partially because Chrome really wants real GPU support nowadays, uses a lot more resources (remember that 32-bit XP memory limit of ~3.7 GiB) and because I know they are going to stop supporting eventually.

If a browser is absolutely necessary on an XP machine, I suggest using (optionally portable) Firefox. It is secure, supports most everything Chrome does, and uses less resources. For now Firefox is still supporting XP (SP2 and above). There is also Opera for time being.